


What appears to be yours

by insensible



Series: If only, but also [6]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur's parents were exceptionally unhelpful emotional models, Don't even get me started on their understanding of gender roles, Fools in Love, Genderfluid Eames, Identity Porn, In-dream sex, M/M, Mention of a Ramones t-shirt, Porn, no wait, that's it really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:20:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25366738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insensible/pseuds/insensible
Summary: “Better,” says Arthur, then peers curiously. “She has your tattoos?”Eames looks down, surprised. “She appears to have, Arthur. Didn’t expect that.”
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Series: If only, but also [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822282
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	What appears to be yours

“So. Arthur.”

“What?”

“Women.”

“Women?”

“What do you think of them?”

“What do I … what kind of question is that?”

“I mean, have you ever?”

“Oh. Yes.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Did you like it? Was it fun? No reason, no reason, just interested.”

“Interested how?”

“Academically.”

“ _Bullshit_.”

“Ok, not _entirely_ academically.”

“Eames, are you asking me for something?”

Eames doesn’t do shy. Eames does everything but. But right now Eames looks shy.

He says, slowly, “If I were, might you be interested?”

“I’d need more data before coming to any decision.”

“Arthur, stop it. Would you be up for some… “

“Some what?”

“…in-dream gender-swap action?”

Arthur laughs out loud at that.

“Ok. No. Off the table. It was just a … “

“Eames, I laughed because you said the words _in-dream gender swap action_. Yes. If you want to forge a woman, you should. It might not work out, but…”

“But?”

“You know there’s not much I wouldn’t try, with you.”

Eames is firing on all cylinders now, having triumphed over momentary peril.

“You need to make a list of those exceptions, Arthur, as a matter of extreme urgency. I need to see what they all are, see if any of them are negotiable. I’m a very persuasive person.”

“Not on current evidence, Eames. I’ve been waiting for you to ask this for months. What took you so long?”

*

She’s blonde and statuesque and anatomically highly improbable and Arthur immediately shakes his head.

“No?”

“No.”

“I like her,” Eames says. But he drops the forge, stands there looking tweedy and rueful.

“Someone a little more boyish, then,” he nods, and shifts in an instant into a petite woman with a pixie cut. She’s got cheekbones to cut with, a Ramones t-shirt, dark eyes, and a look of mischief that’s all Eames.

“Better,” says Arthur, then peers curiously. “She has your tattoos?”

Eames looks down, surprised. “She appears to have, Arthur. Didn’t expect that.”

*

It’s _sweet_. That’s what it is.

Arthur sits on the white linen bedcover and Pixie Eames climbs into his lap, straddles him, laces her hands behind his head.

“Christ, Eames, is that Charlie Red?”

Eames sniffs, looks amused and impressed.

“No idea. Is that what it’s called? Do you want me to change it?”

“No. Commendable detail.”

“Arthur, we’re not here for critique.”

Arthur kisses her. She tastes of herbal tea, something flowery; her skin is hot, faintly dewy. She kisses a little like Eames when he’s trying to apologise for something. Eames is so _light_ like this, so supple, so soft under her shirt, and when Arthur cups a breast and brushes his thumb against a nipple she falls gratefully against him, eyelashes brushing his cheek.

It’s been a long time since Arthur’s had anything like this, and he’s enjoying himself, though part of him is wondering if what he’s most enjoying is how beautifully Eames is playing the role.

“Eames, do you like being like this?” he says.

“Very much,” she breathes, catching his earlobe in her teeth for the tiniest tug and lick.

“What’s it like?” he says. He’s never asked Eames this, not in all the myriad forges he’s watched him hold.

It is, he realises as soon as he says it, an idiotic question.

She frowns, blinks a few times. It’s Eames’ puzzled expression, and it sits just a little oddly on her face.

“Arthur,” he says. “I don’t know what you’re asking. This is all me.”

*

She lifts herself from him, stands, peels off her t-shirt, then her jeans as Arthur watches. Her bare toes are tipped with chipped red polish, very dark, almost black. She’s wearing no underwear, just a tiny, bright green brassiere. It has a lace butterfly the size of his thumbnail stitched to its centre. She really does have all Eames’ tattoos, even the UNESCO one on her ribs, now far more compact and darker in tone—interesting scaling, Arthur thinks. He’s feeling self-conscious, he realises. He’s hard, certainly, but almost despite himself. When Eames looks at him, hotly, expectantly, it’s like Arthur's looking into a mirror but doesn’t quite recognise who he sees.

“Arthur,” she says. “Can I see more of you, please?”

He strips automatically, tries to stop himself folding his clothes and fails. When she presses herself against him he falls back onto the bed, and quickly decides this is lovely; her skin is ridiculously smooth, he can feel the soft brush of the trimmed hair between her legs against his thigh, the first drag of wetness. She makes a little, sharp bite at his collarbone, takes the skin between her teeth and worries it a little, and Arthur would normally take that as a clear request for escalation, but that doesn’t seem the right thing to do, not now, so he cards his hand through her hair, scratching gently at her scalp, and gasps a little as she bites down harder.

“I should have longer nails,” she says. “Do you want longer?”

“No, just…“ says Arthur. He isn’t doing this right, somehow. He has to get this right.

* 

When he kneels on the floor and gets his mouth on Eames he is genuinely surprised. He’s so surprised his fingers dig into her thighs and she jumps. “Sorry,” he says, quickly. “Sorry.”

Eames hoists herself up on one elbow, frowns.

“Arthur, we can stop, no big deal. This has been lovely, but if it’s not working for you, we can happily finish this tops...”

“It’s not that,” says Arthur. “It’s …" he licks his lips, puzzled. “You taste of champagne.”

Eames grins. “That’s not me,” she says.

“It’s not?”

“ _You’re_ doing that. I hope it’s _good_ champagne.”

Arthur finds himself at a bit of a loss. This is not how sense perception is supposed to work, down here, and he’s already mentally filing this as an example of “in-dream anomalous qualia" for further research but Eames, he realises, is not going to let him dwell. Eames is not going to let him dwell on work when he’s right there, his mouth an inch from her.

“It’s _not_ good champagne?” she asks.

Arthur takes a deep breath. “Cristal, I’m afraid,” he says.

“Ugh,” says Eames. “But I think you should keep tasting it, it might turn into something better, you never know.”

Arthur bends his head back down.

Eames is loving this. She’s making the tiniest, restless whimpers. Arthur has slipped a curious finger inside her, is gratified by how arousing it is to feel her hotly quivering and clenching around it as he sucks and kisses and licks. He’s trying to remember how to do this properly, recalls a book he had, as a teenager, that explained it all, how to shift pressure from soft to hard and back again and where to touch and when. She’s so wet, her thighs are trembling, and Arthur feels a sense of triumph as he feels her begin to tighten around his crooked finger—he has made Eames come so many times it’s come to seem as much a part of the natural order of things as black coffee first thing in the morning, but this—it’s been a very long time; it’s so _different._

But the moment passes, somehow; he’s done something wrong, he's sure, has misjudged his technique, and then Eames is back on her elbows, looking down at him.

“Arthur?” she says.

Arthur looks up at her, wet skin on his face suddenly cold. It’s not simply evaporation. The ambient temperature in-dream has plummeted. He shivers.

“Come up here for a second?”

He sits. She licks herself from his cheeks.

“Doesn’t taste like champagne to me,” she says, and winks. Then she looks serious. “I would love you to fuck me, Arthur, but I have a feeling this isn’t doing it for you. You’re not talking, for one. And second … I’m me. I’m still me. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of being treated like glass. Christ, love, two weeks ago you cut my throat down here, it’s not like I’m going to be traumatised by being manhandled.”

Arthur feels shame, then. It’s hot and it’s terrible. It’s also so _old_ he feels it like ash deep in his bones. It’s an emotion he spent most of his young life very familiar with. He’s not felt it for a very long time.

He stares at the floor, mute.

Eames is looking at him very curiously.

Then her face falls.

“Oh _Arthur_ ,” she says. “I see.”

*

Arthur has worked in dreamshare so long that his knowledge of in-dream physics is beyond comprehensive. If something happens, Arthur has usually seen it before. If he hasn’t, he can invariably explain the phenomenon, why it happened, track it against the formulation they used, the psychology of those in the dream, the bleed-through of topside contexts. But this dream has already perplexed him, and perhaps that’s why he greets what happens next with far less surprise than he would usually feel warranted.

Eames reaches forward to kiss him, sweet as can be, then pulls his hands up to cup her face.

“You _know_ ,” she says, “but you _forget_ ,” and as she kisses him Arthur feels her face shift, feels stubble prickle against his palms; the bed sinks, and through his half-closed eyes, Arthur sees Eames. But when he gets a little more distance between their faces, he sees it is not _quite_ Eames. Or at least, it is absolutely and totally Eames, but not the one up there. Here are his broad shoulders, his musculature, the particular expression of mixed concern and triumph that only Eames can generate, but Eames—he looks down—is most definitely not in possession of a penis.

“Fuck, Eames,” he says, awed, reaching down to caress the soft hair there before slipping his fingers lower. Eames shivers, Eames is very wet and Eames pulls him into another kiss, a proper, fighting, challenging kiss, and Arthur, whose equanimity is somewhat shredded, first clings to it, then gives as good as he gets.

“Better?” says Eames.

“Eames, I’m going to fuck you until you cry,” says Arthur.

“Not if you cry first,” says Eames, grinning, grabbing Arthur’s hair and pulling so hard he shouts. “Welcome home, love.”

This Eames provokes a rush of familiarity and strangeness so strong and intense that Arthur is _bewitched_. He cannot get enough of the body next to him. He pushes Eames onto one side—Eames is laughing—and then Eames’ laugh cuts off, turns into a low groan as Arthur lines up and slips inside, and they move together _perfectly_ ; it’s one of those times where they seem inside each other’s minds as well as bodies. This Eames is maddeningly responsive, incendiary; Arthur gets his hand on their clit and Eames gasps and moans; Arthur plays with Eames’ nipples, awed by the gasps even the gentles touch provokes; when he twists them, even lightly, Eames wails.

“I’m going to come, Arthur, you _bastard_ ,” Eames hisses, and when Arthur feels Eames’ helpless, gripping spasm around his cock, he comes so hard he lets out something that Eames later tries to persuade him was a scream.

“It wasn’t,” says Arthur, coiling PASIV lines.

“It was,” says Eames, looking dishevelled and extremely smug.

“It wasn’t,” says Arthur, brushing at his lapel, then palming himself. “Shower, _now_.”


End file.
